Effect of the new maternity insurance scheme on medical expenditures for caesarean delivery in Wuxi, China： a retrospective pre/post-reform case study

• Published in: Frontiers of medicine Vol. 10; no. 4; pp. 473 - 480
• Main Authors: Chen, Chun, Cheng, Zhihong, Jiang, Ping, Sun, Mei, Zhang, Qi, Lv, Jun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Higher Education Press 01.12.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: caesarean delivery; Cesarean section; Cesarean Section - economics; China; Expenditures; Female; financial incentive; Health Care Reform - standards; Health Expenditures - trends; Hospitals, Public - economics; Humans; Insurance, Health - economics; Linear Models; maternity insurance scheme; medical expenditure; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Pregnancy; Research Article; Retrospective Studies; China; maternity insurance scheme; caesarean delivery; financial incentive; medical expenditure; China
• ISSN: 2095-0217; 2095-0225
• DOI: 10.1007/s11684-016-0479-2

Aiming to control rising medical expenditures and help improve China＇s healthcare systems, this study examined whether a cap-based medical insurance scheme with shared financial interest between the insurance and healthcare providers is effective in containing hospitals＇ C-section medical expenditures. We used 6547 caesarean delivery case records from a teaching tertiary-level general public hospital located in Wuxi, China （2004-2013）, and used the Chow test to investigate the possibility of significant variation in mean medical expenditures for caesarean deliveries pre- and post-reform. We also used paired sample t-tests and linear regression models to compare the mean medical expenditures between insured and uninsured women undergoing caesarean delivery during the post-reform period. After the scheme＇s implementation, medical expenditures for caesarean deliveries declined and the medical expenditures of women covered by the scheme were significantly lower than those of uninsured patients. These findings indicated the scheme＇s effectiveness in minimizing caesarean delivery expenditures. The cap-based medical insurance scheme with shared financial interest between insurance and healthcare providers would likely steer healtbcare providers＇ behaviors in a more cost-effective direction.